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Microcontroller by mistered · 2000-10-15 10:52 · Score: 2 · on Illusionary LED clock

If you're interested in microcontroller projects you might want to consider Atmel's AVR series. Atmel has a selection matrix which shows the AVR variants available. Some of the advantages over PICs:

You can use Steven Bolt's sp12 programmer which requires just a crystal and a few caps and resistors to build a stand-alone programmer, or requires nothing more than connectors and a few series resistors for an in-circuit-programming version.
All parts are flash based, not just a select few.
A low end established flash based part is available with a UART.
Flash parts are available with PWM channels, A/D converters, 16 bit timers, SPI and analog comparators.
A starter kit is available for $49 USD that comes with an in-circuit programming dongle and a demo board.
The series includes devices with between 1KB and 128KB of flash program storage.
(My favourite feature) GNU Binutils, GCC and even GDB target the AVR line. It's a joy to have access to a free and Free macro assembler and C compiler. Many micros come with free assemblers but these are often buggy and lack features, and it's very rare to get a free C compiler.

(Note that the latest binutils release supports the AVR, but the AVR GCC support is available as a patch to 2.95.2 at the location given above, or in the latest CVS & snapshots of GCC. The server hosting the patches seems to be down and has been for a short while, so Google's caching might come in handy. Google won't let me link directly to the cached version so just to to the cache of the first link for this search.)

Re:Plasma Display by 11223 · 2000-10-09 01:08 · Score: 2 · on Super Large, Super Hi-Res LCD Screens?

Why don't you try QING (QING Is Not Geiss) - it's a visualisation plugin for SoundPlay, the kickass backwards-playing sound player for BeOS?

This is how it works... by VeniDormi · 2000-10-05 01:09 · Score: 2 · on Can IP Masquerading Handle L2TP Connections?

L2TP (Layer 2 tunneling protocol) typically used with IPSec the same way PPP (Point-to-Point Protocol) is used with PPTP (L2TP/IPSec is the default VPN config for Win2K). L2TP encapsulates IP, IPX or whatever, and is encapsulated inside IPSec. From the RFC Draft: "The Layer Two Tunneling Protocol (L2TP) ... permits the tunneling of the link layer (i.e., HDLC, async HDLC) of PPP." In essence it's a pared down PPP specifically for use in tunneling multiple protocols over IP.

You can actually masquerade IPSec connections under the right circumstances, although I'd recommend patching your Linux firewall with the FreeS/WAN stuff and doing it from there unless you absolutely HAVE to.

From John Hardin's website:
"The IPsec AH protocol (51/ip) incorporates a cryptographic checksum including the IP addresses in the IP header. Since masquerading changes those IP addresses and since the cryptographic checksum cannot be recalculated by the masquerading firewall, the masqueraded packets will fail the checksum test and will be discarded by the remote IPsec gateway. Therefore, IPsec implementations that use the AH protocol cannot be successfully masqueraded. Sorry. (ESP with authentication can be masqueraded.)"

Some links you might find helpful:
Linux L2TP Daemon (rather old)
The Draft RFC mentioned above (from the same site)
John Hardin's VPN Masquerading Website
FreeS/WAN home page (IPSec for Linux)

Re:To put things in perspective by tooth · 2000-09-01 21:34 · Score: 1 · on Apocalypse Missed: Asteroid Near Miss

tooth (me) said: I think this is the only experiment from Apollo that is still usable today

I found a link that may be of interest: Apollo 11 experiment continues to return valuable data.

Dutch ruling: deeplinking content is legal. by mazur · 2000-08-23 04:44 · Score: 3 · on More On Kaplan's Ruling Making Links Illegal

I had wanted to submit this as a story in "Your Rights Online:", but since Babelfish doesn't do Dutch, and I do not see how my employer would condone, that I spend work time translating Dutch newspaper articles for /., and I somehow have other priorities in my Copious Free Time, I didn't. However, passing by /. just now, seeing this story, I thought I'd mention it: Last tuesday the court in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, rejected an injunction against kranten.com (tr: papers.com, SML.), a Dutch internet site deeplinking the most important stories of the most important Dutch newspapers, using the headlines for describing the links. The injunction was brought by a major publisher, PCM, whose objections were primarily motivated by the fact, that by directly deeplinking to the actual article, kranten.com bypassed the frontpage, where the most advertisements are. The paper maintained to suffer financial damage because of this. It also maintained to have copyright on the headlines.

Judge J. Mendlink (no joke, folks. SML) waived the arguments, stating, that if PCM, doesn't want others to use their information, that they should not put it on internet for free. He also considered it doubtful, that the newspapers in question actually incurred damage.

Funnily enough, normally internet-savvy journalist Francisco van Jole, who has been on the internet about since the start of last September (which was the '93 one, as we all know. SML.), predicted the imminent death of content on the internet.

Anyone with time and language skill is invited to translate the actual article or articles, via kranten.com or directly from for instance de Volkskrant or de NRC, the best two national newspapers as far as I can tell, with preference to the latter. Both are actually published by PCM. Though only de Volkskrant probably has van Jole's actual words.

De Volkskrant also ran another story on "Ever more Merkins in Dutch ICT". Interesting, but I've got no time to tell ya about it.

Stefan (using my initials SML for editorial comments above).
It takes a lot of brains to enjoy satire, humor and wit-

Re:scratching by fingal · 2000-08-15 23:43 · Score: 1 · on Party Tonight In San Jose

Let's try that one more time (latest beta of kde/konqueror has an annoying habit of not honouring selected tags inside html options so tends to reset values after previewing - must get on the case and submit a bug report)

Or, if he's really on the case then he would use one of these setups...

if you're going to scratch things then you should at least try and use the original user interface.

Bubble Memory by mr · 2000-08-15 20:57 · Score: 1 · on What Will Be The Next Generation Of RAM?

MRAM reminds me of a 1980's technology.

Bubble Memory.

From this site there is this def. A type of non-volatile memory composed of a thin layer of material that can be easily magnetized in only one direction. When a magnetic field is applied to circular area of this substance that is not magnetized in the same direction, the area is reduced to a smaller circle, or bubble.
It was once widely believed that bubble memory would become one of the leading memory technologies, but these promises have not been fulfilled. Other non-volatile memory types, such as EEPROM, are both faster and less expensive than bubble memory.

A better link has actual tech trawings and data sheets.

And the final link for today tells of 128K and 512K devices in 1981! (Hint: that was alot of memory!)

Linkage by shuffler · 2000-08-10 01:10 · Score: 1 · on Nine More Extrasolar Planets Discovered

Here are some articles that illustrate how life on Earth discredits the criterea for designating a planet of being capable of supporting life:

Re:documentation by Gumpu · 2000-08-04 15:34 · Score: 1 · on Anders Hejlsberg Interviewed On C#

>> I don't know how long they've been doing this. GtkAda isn't all that old, but I noticed this well before I ever heard of C#.

On the Amiga in 1987 or so there was something called autodoc that did something similar. From that several tools have evolved (For instance
ROBODoc, DOC++, ScanDoc).... so it is definitely not new. Though the use of XML might be.

Re:Some Real Data: 79.8% Win2K by jcn · 2000-08-01 04:54 · Score: 1 · on Hotmail about to collapse under load

Huh, lw7fd.law7.hotmail.msn.com? We were talking about www.hotmail.com, no?

If I run your script, I get roughly your results, but if I run:

#!/bin/bash i=0 while [ "$i" -lt 100 ] do lynx -head -dump http://www.hotmail.com/ >> /var/tmp/hotmail i=$((i+1)) done grep Server /var/tmp/hotmail | sort | uniq -c

I get

23:29:17 appel ~$ ./thm 95 Server: Apache/1.3.6 (Unix) mod_ssl/2.2.8 SSLeay/0.9.0b 5 Server: Microsoft-IIS/5.0

about what netcraft reports.

Jan

--
Jan Nieuwenhuizen | GNU LilyPond - The music typesetter
www.xs4all.nl/~jantien | www.lilypond.org

Forget PPTP, go IPSEC by cowbutt · 2000-07-17 01:32 · Score: 1 · on Open VPNs On Unix That Support Windows Clients?

PPTP, like most Microsoft protocols, was designed to allow them to market a product before everyone else had agreed on a fully open standard. That standard is IPsec and FreeS/WAN is (AFAIK) the only implementation of that for Linux.

Alternatively, for other readers who are prepared to spring for a commercial solution, V-One's SmartGate product springs to mind. It also implements IPsec and is supported on RH6.0.

Counterpane, Bruce Schneier's company, has a few papers on PPTP and IPsec on their website.

IPSec Implementations by Martin+Foster · 2000-07-17 01:24 · Score: 2 · on Open VPNs On Unix That Support Windows Clients?

IPSec is one of the more interesting technologies out there at the moment. Essentially, it has the advantages of being implemented into multiple diffrent server platforms and client workstations.

For example OpenBSD supports it's natively and Linux can be made to support it with the FreeS/WAN projects kernel patches which allow you the IPSec functionality.

Unforuntately, the problems lie with IPSec compatible clients for the Win32 platform:

Essentially, if you company uses Win9X and NT then you have no problems. The Link will show you a bunch of clients that will actually work under OpenBSD's implementation of IPSec. Some of which are actually quite good.

On the other hand Windows 2000 is VERY unsupported. In fact it is very hard to find a Windows 2000 implementation (other then the poor implementation in Windows 2000 itself). Quite a few promise an implementation in a few months, some even a few weeks, but that does little if you need it done now.

If you need to get VPN clients for Windows 2000. I have found two that support it, but have yet to be able to test it's implementation ability with OpenBSD (the companies current Firewall/NAT platform). The two I have found are listed below:

Ashley-Laurent's VPCom Client. They also sell server software which may be of use (as you can open up one port to that box to gain IPSec functionality). The clients are a bit pricy (US 89.00$) in my opinion and I found the configuration to be somewhat convoluted. You can find their page here.

While I have not tried this one yet, it looks very nice, at least on the sales side. They offer a hardware server as well as software clients and the licensing is a bit lower in price (US 49.00$). They too have had a Windows 2000 clients for a few months now, and seem to be keeping tabs on technology. You can look at their products here.

Note : You can get a trial server and client if you are a company for about a month.

.

Now if anyone else knows of Windows 2000 compatible clients that work with IPSec then I would be very interested in knowing about them

FreeS/WAN by hempguy · 2000-07-17 00:39 · Score: 1 · on Open VPNs On Unix That Support Windows Clients?

First, I'd like to say, that I share the tought that Ask Slashdot is getting lamer & lamer. If I would post this question 6 months ago, it would be rejected immediately and I would have to go to freshmeat. Which I did. Altough I am not using a VPN in a professional environment (yet?), I'll explain my situation.

We have to networks (each of them have around 5 M$ clients, and 1 Linux box as firewall). I installed FreeS/WAN on both machines -- the documentation is pretty good -- and in NO time all network neighborhoods showed the Win-clients of the other network. I understand that the recent releases even have improved road warrior support! I don't know anything about the other programs mentioned here, but I know for sure that Linux (and FreeS/WAN) makes an excellent VPN gateway.

my € 0.2

-8<--

FreeS/WAN by Ranger+Rick · 2000-07-17 00:28 · Score: 3 · on Open VPNs On Unix That Support Windows Clients?

Try FreeS/WAN. It is an IPSec package that handles VPNs and other firewalling-type stuff, and it's compatible with most other IPSec packages (meaning you can hook up with Checkpoint VPN-1 and such).

:wq!

FreeS/WAN by FattMattP · 2000-07-11 04:21 · Score: 1 · on FBI E-Mail Wiretaps - The Carnivore System

This is just another reason why things such as FreeS/WAN are so very important.

Z80 versus 8088 by JabberWokky · 2000-06-28 04:36 · Score: 2 · on Crusoe vs. Dell And Compaq

.
You're right, of course... I got that backwards. They do share the same opcodes, but the Z80 cloned the 8088. (Click here).

And how many other people here programmed a 4004? I found one in a music-tone guitar, ripped it out, and played with it. It was obsolete then, so they kept making them for quite awhile.

Oh, and as to the fact that the Commie 64 didn't have a Z80 - oops. I mentally thought to myself as I was typing: "It had a 6502 (like my trusty Apple ][+), and a Z80, and people are going to complain that it didn't have a Z80 because it had two CPUs".

It was the Commodore 128 that had a Z80 for CP/M mode. Both the 64 and 128 had 6502s as their main processor.

--
Evan

Finally... a story where this is *not* offtopic... by Anonymous Coward · 2000-05-19 20:38 · Score: 5 · on Oxford Yanks Student Page Over Spoof DeCSS

and I'm asleep at the keyboard. Doh!

Oh well... here it is.
Add your own, and spread this far and wide:

This announcement brought to you by the DeCSS Polar Bear.

Finally... a story where this is *not* offtopic... by Anonymous Coward · 2000-05-19 20:38 · Score: 5 · on Oxford Yanks Student Page Over Spoof DeCSS

and I'm asleep at the keyboard. Doh!

Oh well... here it is.
Add your own, and spread this far and wide:

This announcement brought to you by the DeCSS Polar Bear.

XS4all by Adnans · 2000-05-19 06:28 · Score: 1 · on Web-Based Helpdesks?

My provider has an extensive online helpdesk. Not that I need helpdesk handholding *g*. Check out http://www.xs4all.nl/helpdesk/index.php3, PHP driven, quite good. Hey, they even support Linux! There is also a "service center" where you can change your configuration or request other services without ever calling up the provider. Bottom line, you can automate or script many functions of the helpdesk.

Reading about Scientology by Anal+Surprise · 2000-04-27 17:36 · Score: 4 · on eBay E-Meter Auctions Yanked

If you have some time and are curious about Scientology, the following are interesting:

A Piece of Blue Sky and Lonesome Squirrel.

L. Ron Hubbard's "legacy" is an interest example of the weirdness of the human mind. Want more? Check out The Kooks' Museum, Donny Kossy's excellent look into the minds of the truly weird.

Re:The thing that's weird by Draoi · 2000-04-27 17:16 · Score: 1 · on eBay E-Meter Auctions Yanked

Maybe next they'll go after anti-CoS websites?

Hey - whaddya mean next!! :-b

Pete C

Re:LILO vs GURD err, i mean GRUB by jcn · 2000-04-27 00:53 · Score: 2 · on New LILO Breaks 1024-Cyl Limit

Ok, I'm no bootloader guru either, but on my x86 laptop I've been using GRUB for quite a while (to multiboot into Linux or HURD).

It's still a bit hairy to install, but I beats me why anyone is still using Lilo. With grub, you get an editable list of boot images. If you messed up, the only thing you need is figure-out where a kernel is, and you've got tab-completion to find it. No messing around with boot floppies.

So, can anyone tell me why she's using Lilo for her distribution?

Jan

--
Jan Nieuwenhuizen | GNU LilyPond - The music typesetter
www.xs4all.nl/~jantien | www.lilypond.org

Psion does it all by cardozo · 2000-04-20 21:06 · Score: 2 · on Hands-On Review of PocketPC

It will be a great day when Psion finally figures out how to let the world know about its palmtop.

I've been using the Psion Series 5mx (and previously the 5) for several years now. It does everything I want in a Palmtop. Can run more "real" apps than the Palm, and does them better than the PocketPC. Why does this great tool go unnoticed?

Just to give a few software examples, it's got a fine word processor, spreadsheet and flat-file database. (A relational database is available aftermarket.) It comes with calendar, contacts, email, web browsing ... all the expected items from a "connected organizer" And it does synchronize with many desktop apps.

After the standard software, things get interesting. There's a large and dedicated bunch of people making amazing things for the Psion. I've got Doom (yes, you can get it for CE, too), a PDF viewer , and pretty much anything else you'd ever want. It's a real computer, with real applications for it. And the crowning glory is that the Psion has Perl. There is even a project to put Linux on the Psion, but the built in OS is really quite good.

On to hardware: The best thing about the Psion is its keyboard, a real one. I can even touch type on it. No chiclet keys these, but full-travel good feeling keys. Yes they're close together, yes you have to do a key combination to get slash, but I can type so much faster than I can graffiti, it's worth a few adjustments.

The 5mx is as speedy as I need, 36mHz ARM processor; 16 megs of RAM built in, with a slot for Compact Flash cards. And the screen ... well, it's big, and useful, 640x240. The 5mx is brighter than the 5, but they still could learn something about bright screens from Palm. Oh, 16 shades of gray, too, makes viewing images much nicer. Finally, battery life: I get a month out of 2 AA batteries: somewhere between 20 and 35 hours depending on how much I use the backlight.

As far as palmtops go, I've never seen one that does everything I need it to do, and does it the way I expect it to be done, as does the Psion Series 5mx. Psion also makes other palmtops, the more consumer oriented Revo, and the larger, color, Series 7, but I still think the Series 5 is the best of the bunch.

Bare Faced Messiah by auntfloyd · 2000-04-14 00:07 · Score: 2 · on Battlefield Earth

The book has been put online. You can read it at http://www.xs4all.nl/~kspaink/ cos/rmiller/index.html.

If more out-of-print books could be available on the web...

Re:But people have no CHOICE! by chandler · 2000-04-09 21:14 · Score: 1 · on Suck On Skins And UI

Check out SoundPlay for BeOS, an MP3 player that uses the built-in interface or a WinAmp skin.

"The romance of Silicon Valley was about money - excuse me, about changing the world, one million dollars at a time."

Time for Slashdot to take a stand... by Anonymous Coward · 2000-04-05 03:12 · Score: 4 · on MPAA Files Another Injunction Against 2600

The following is a list of all the mirrors from the 2600 site.

Time for Slashdot to take a stand... by Anonymous Coward · 2000-04-05 03:12 · Score: 4 · on MPAA Files Another Injunction Against 2600

The following is a list of all the mirrors from the 2600 site.

Re:I really don't like this ruling by johnpc · 2000-04-03 16:13 · Score: 1 · on Microsoft Loses

2) MS violated the Sherman Act by "unlawfully tying its Web browser to its operating system";
[...]
Ruling 2), on the other hand, is dead wrong, and I have a very difficult time believing any of you disagree. The simple fact is, every desktop OS/environment today has an integrated web browser.

IMO, what the ruling condemnes is not so much the actual integration of the browser to the OS, but the way in which it was tied to it. The FofF give rather explicit details about the way the integration of the browser literally into the core OS generally hurt consumers more than they benefit from it (less stable platform, more difficult to remove browser if not wanted, etc).

I find it actually reassuring that they are being punished for this.

3) "the effect of Microsoft's marketing arrangements with other companies" did NOT constitute "unlawful exclusive dealing under criteria established by leading decisions".
[...]
As for 3), I'd say that it is precisely MS's marketing arrangements that have made them an anticompetitive monopoly. I admit that IANAL and thus Judge Jackson knows the "criteria established by leading decisions" much much better than I do. However, if in fact MS does not meet those criteria, than I think a new precedent must be advanced, as MS has clearly effected the competitive landscape in the software industry for the worse.

I agree with you on this one. The business practices described in the FofF are disgusting at best. But being a european techie, I probably don't understand american business ethics very well. Maybe they're "common practice" in the US.

(Disclaimer: IANAL. And I haven't read the entire CofL yet, I will read it in the train in palm doc format just as I did with the FofF)

It's here by jfedor · 2000-03-27 22:40 · Score: 1 · on BeOS 5.0 Available for Free - But Not Yet

ftp://dl.xs4all.nl/pub/mirror/Beos/

-jfedor

The mirror site list by wolvie_ · 2000-03-27 20:43 · Score: 5 · on BeOS 5.0 Available for Free - But Not Yet

For those who can't get to free.be.com, here is the mirror site list they have posted:

Americas:
http://www.zdnet.com/ - Ziff-Davis, North America
http://download.cnet.com/ - CNET/Download.com, California
ftp://.beoscentral.com/pub/ - BeOS CentralJohnson City, TN
http://freebe.nerdygirls.com/ - Oak Ridge, TN
ftp://www.beforever.com/pub/beforever /freebe/ - BeForever, Omaha, NE
ftp://mirrors.rochester.rr.com/pub/be/ - RoadRunner.Com, Rochester, NY
ftp://ftp.be.com/pub/beos/ - Be, Inc. San Jose, CA

Europe/Australia:
ftp://mirror.aarnet.edu.au/pub/beos/ - AARNet, Brisbane, Australia
ftp://ftp.beeurope.com/pub/ - BeEurope, Paris, France
ftp://ftp.worldonline.fr/ - World Online, Paris, France
ftp://ftp.gigabell.net/pub/beos/ - Gigabell.Net, Frankfurt, Germany
ftp://ftp.ph-freiburg.de/pub/m irrors/ftp.be.com/beos - P.H. Freiburg, Freiburg, Germany
http://www.computerchannel.de/download /beos/ - ComputerChannel, Hamburg, Germany
ftp://ftp.xtdnet.com/pub/ - XTDNet, Karlsruhe, Germany
ftp://ftp.zdf.de/pub/ - Neues-3Sat Online, Mainz, Germany
http://pcteor1.mi.infn.it/beos/ - Univ. of Milan, Milan, Italy
ftp://dl.xs4all.nl/pub/ - XS4All, Amsterdam, Netherlands
ftp://ftp.sunet.se/pub/os/BeOS/ - SUNET, Uppsala, Sweden

For Linux (glibc2.x), but not for me? by jcn · 2000-03-12 20:58 · Score: 3 · on RealPlayer 7 Beta for Linux

Guess I asked for it, when I decided against using buying hardware (+bundled software package from IBM), but I'd greatly appreciate it if people would not assume Linux == ix86.

My GNU/Linux box is a PowerPC (ppc), and it runs Linux as well as glibc2.1, but why do I think `Package Foo for Linux' won't run over here?

It may be quite a while until the ignorant lot get this, but we could do with a bit more enlightened view from /.

Jan

--
Jan Nieuwenhuizen | GNU LilyPond - The music typesetter
www.xs4all.nl/~jantien | www.lilypond.org

Re:Music notation software: GNU Lilypond by jcn · 2000-03-11 07:34 · Score: 2 · on What Is The State Of MIDI Support Under Linux?

Ok, sorry. I was a bit harsh. But I really feel this was not a really helpful comment; I'm tempted to say it was a rather ignorant comment. Also, I tried to explain why RobGrant was in error. One of the biggest problems with MIDI->notation already starts with the pitch (enharmonic exchanges) and duration.

In a few, exceptional cases, it might be that you can't tell the difference between a quarter an a sixteenth note with rests. But in *most* cases there is a difference. (As a viola player, I can assure you that there is a difference between a whole note pizzicato, and a quarter note.) So why draw focus to the exeptional case where the generally expected possibility MIDI->notation would maybe not be problematic?

Also, you shot yourself in the foot, or at least prove that you've missed the point, when you say:

...might need to be translated from it's standard representation to something shorter, in order to make your midi sound right.

We were discussing the problems of MIDI->notation: `MIDI doesn't contain the information you need', and here you even introduce a new fictional one! For the case when you wouldn't have pizzicato strings (when would that be?), you suggest to introduce yet another inaccuracy to MIDI.

Moderators, what am I missing here?

Jan

--
Jan Nieuwenhuizen | GNU LilyPond - The music typesetter
www.xs4all.nl/~jantien | www.lilypond.org

Re:Finale is the god of notation. NOT. by jcn · 2000-03-11 01:16 · Score: 1 · on What Is The State Of MIDI Support Under Linux?

Besides bias, there's the matter of personal taste, of course. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. From what others tell me (about Finale), I get the impression that my judgement isn't too far off. But you tell me, how biased is my judgement in this matter; do you seriously find Finale to be any competition, apropos typesetting quality? Now if you had nominated Amadeus, SCORE, or even Sibelius... But Finale?

What specific typesetting qualities of Finale do you like best? We can change LilyPond, Free Software, remember? (Please refer to hardcopy, we've had complaints from people that saw the PNGs).

Btw, an important reason to use or develop LilyPond is the fact that it's Free Software. The (arguably) poor output quality of <your proprietary package here> isn't as important to me, although it doesn't hurt to be better :-)

Jan

--
Jan Nieuwenhuizen | GNU LilyPond - The music typesetter
www.xs4all.nl/~jantien | www.lilypond.org

Re:Music notation software: GNU Lilypond by jcn · 2000-03-11 00:22 · Score: 1 · on What Is The State Of MIDI Support Under Linux?

That's nonsense, of course. In the normal case, a quarter note sounds for the full duration of, uhm, well, a quarter note (not counting accents such as staccato, saltato). That's four times longer than a sixteenth sounds (gee, I'm good at arithmetic)! This naturally goes for strings, but also for piano and I'm pretty sure it holds for percussion instruments such as timpani too: a sixteenth note will get 'damped' to sound just the duration of a sixteenth, and not sound during the rests (rest = no sound; not necessarily long enough to take a rest).

Jan

--
Jan Nieuwenhuizen | GNU LilyPond - The music typesetter
www.xs4all.nl/~jantien | www.lilypond.org

Status of RoseGarden by jcn · 2000-03-11 00:02 · Score: 2 · on What Is The State Of MIDI Support Under Linux?

Although commiting the sinn of replying to my own post, and at the risk of being judged posting redundant, I feel I'd better correct myself: there were some 50 posts on the RoseGarden ( www.bath.ac.uk/~masjpf/rose.html) list this year.

Jan

--
Jan Nieuwenhuizen | GNU LilyPond - The music typesetter
www.xs4all.nl/~jantien | www.lilypond.org

LilyPond without TeX by jcn · 2000-03-10 23:29 · Score: 1 · on What Is The State Of MIDI Support Under Linux?

For people that find the dependency on TeX too cumbersome (using Windows?), it is good to know that LilyPond has also direct PostScript output:

17:27:24 appel ~/usr/src/lilypond$ lilypond -f ps scales.fly
GNU LilyPond 1.3.31.jcn5
[./scm/lily.scm]
Parsing...[./ly/init.fly[./ly/declarations.ly[./sc m/generic-property.scm][./ly/nederlands. ly][./ly/chord-modifiers.ly[./scm/chord-names.scm] ][./ly/script.ly[./scm/script.scm]][./ly /generic-paper.ly[./scm/paper.scm]][./ly/paper20.l y[./ly/params.ly[./ly/a4.ly][./ly/paper. ly][./ly/engraver.ly[./ly/auto-beam-settings.ly][. /ly/auto-beam-settings.ly]]]][./ly/midi. ly[./scm/midi.scm][./ly/performer.ly]][./ly/textsc ripts.ly][./ly/spanners.ly][./ly/propert y.ly]][scales.fly]]
Interpreting music...[3]
elapsed time: 0.12 seconds
Preprocessing elements... [./afm/feta20.afm]
Calculating column positions...[0]
paper output to scales.ps...[./ps/lilyponddefs.ps][./ps/lily.ps]

Jan

--
Jan Nieuwenhuizen | GNU LilyPond - The music typesetter
www.xs4all.nl/~jantien | www.lilypond.org

Is `a b c' really that difficult? by jcn · 2000-03-10 23:18 · Score: 1 · on What Is The State Of MIDI Support Under Linux?

If you're a composer, I guess you need a GUI (well, maybe Mozart didn't). But it is well known that for simple music entry you don't particularly want a GUI, you don't want a mouse anyway.

Here's your first scale in LilyPond (scale.fly):

c d e f g a b c

For more information, see LilyPond user's manual (170k).

If that's all really too difficult, there's still hope. As a separate project, work is underway to build a GUI (GTK+) frontend to LilyPond. Check out Denemo: denemo.sourceforge.net. Still in its early stages, but already usable.

There was a discussion on the SCORE mailing list the other day about how rhythm, pitch and ornaments can be typed-in (of course) most efficiently. People tend to prefer seperating them: all pitches first then the rhythm, then marks.

Of course, when you're not using your favourite text editor(TM) for entry, but some integrated notation software, you may find yourself to be back in the eternal computing fields from hell. From the SCORE mailing list:

&gt BTW has anyone ever answered Yes to "Save this staff of input to a file?"
All the time. If there's a crash while entering, say, the 19th staff of a 20 stave score, all those temp files can recreate your losses much faster then completely retyping. This still happens to me maybe a half dozen times per year.

Jan

--
Jan Nieuwenhuizen | GNU LilyPond - The music typesetter
www.xs4all.nl/~jantien | www.lilypond.org

Re:Finale is the god of notation. NOT. by jcn · 2000-03-10 22:40 · Score: 1 · on What Is The State Of MIDI Support Under Linux?

Are you kidding? Sibelius' output is fair, maybe even good, but no more than that. If you think that Finale has fine output, you maybe haven't seen much fine engraved music (I like Baerenreiter) lately, you don't have a keen eye for typography, or you don't really care, IMHO.

I know of at least two cases where people asked us questions about installing GNU/Linux, only so that they could use LilyPond instead of Finale. If you fall for pretty faces, maybe Windows is for you.

Jan.

--
Jan Nieuwenhuizen | GNU LilyPond - The music typesetter
www.xs4all.nl/~jantien | www.lilypond.org

GNU LilyPond, notation and sound by jcn · 2000-03-10 22:17 · Score: 5 · on What Is The State Of MIDI Support Under Linux?

When people say `music', they usually mean `sound' as in mp3 or MIDI. However, because you look for notation software as well, you should check out LilyPond, the GNU music typesetter: www.cs.uu.nl/people/hanwen/lilypond (or www.lilypond.org).

LilyPond also features MIDI output and comes with a separate program (midi2ly) for converting MIDI to LilyPond's input language. However, trying to convert MIDI to sheet music is a rather useless undertaking, IME. Rich MIDI lacks lots of notation features, such as accents, ties (as opposed to a note of double length), chords vs. voices, clefs, grouping into staffs (two voices on one staff, or each on its own), voices that switch staffs, beaming, arpeggios (vs quickly played notes) grace notes and ornaments in general, flageolets, fingering, enharmonics. So, if you want a real nice score, you'll have to edit the resulting score by hand, anyway. It is this editing that takes most of the time, not the entry of plain notes (that is, if you can touch type).

As a separate project, work is underway to build a GUI (GTK+) frontend to LilyPond. Check out Denemo: denemo.sourceforge.net. Still in its early stages, but already usable.

RoseGarden is basically an orphaned project. To quote Elliot Lee: "It isn't going anywhere any time soon." The last post on the Rosegarden mailing list is dated december, 6 1999. There are 2 branches. The first one is the X11 program, and hasn't changed much since the time Han-Wen named LilyPond as a pun on Rosegarden three years ago. They are also doing a complete ground-up rewrite of the package (slated to be 3.0), using Client/Server architecture, CORBA, GUILE, C++ and GTK. This all means that noone is working on the usable 2.x sources, and 3.x doesn't even compile. 2.x doesn't have any LilyPond support, but it is planned for 3.x

Jan.

--
Jan Nieuwenhuizen | GNU LilyPond - The music typesetter
www.xs4all.nl/~jantien | www.lilypond.org

Re:Makes sense... by Mark+F.+Komarinski · 2000-03-01 02:40 · Score: 3 · on Busted for (L0pht)Crack Possession

Here's the applicable section:

http://lethal.xs4all.nl/lockpic k/lock1/appendB.html

This is a bit more narrow (look at the wording) but in a broader sense, l0pht could be a tool, and the depository could be a machine. It's dated 1991, so the laws may have changed since.

One possibility by Emptiness · 2000-03-01 01:58 · Score: 1 · on Open Source Symbolic Math Program?

OK, first off: I have not tested this myself, so I can't say if it really is good or not. I'm just presenting a possibility.

YACAS (http://www.xs4all.nl/~apinkus/yacas.html) came up a while back when I did a search. That page also lists a few other computer algebra systems you might want to look at, like JACAL. Check the related-links section.

Just a thought, but if you do try several of these you might want to write a brief article about your findings. I'm certain that other people would be interested...

YACAS by dr.+claw · 2000-03-01 01:53 · Score: 2 · on Open Source Symbolic Math Program?

Try YACAS (Yet Another Computer Algebra System). In my opinion it lacks the polish of Mathematica, but it's got a fairly powerful core (which you can always extend).

Re:802.11 by Anonymous Coward · 2000-02-28 03:25 · Score: 0 · on Lucent to Offer Cheap Wavelan Cards

Next thing you're going to suggest is hiding our IP addresses?

Good point! One could say the following could help protect a wireless lan:

Blocking MAC hardware addresses from unathorized sources,

but that won't work, because the game of intrigue is such a fun area:

Spoofing MAC addresses can be done on the victim's network, which blows that whole idea out of the water,

...and that is why unrestricted encryption is manditory in a modern network to prevent denial of service attacks by ensuring hosts are authentic and secure. If your government outlaws such, they open themselves to terrorists and shoot themselves in the foot.

Politics and spooks are a deadly combination

No Wires Needed has Linux drivers too by Raindeer · 2000-02-27 22:07 · Score: 2 · on Lucent to Offer Cheap Wavelan Cards

The Dutch company No Wires Needed has some excellent hardware. I belief Compaq is buying their stuff now. At the following site you can find a Linux driver for their Swallow 550. http://www.xs4all.nl/~bvermeul/swallow/

here are the links by Jesus+Christ · 2000-02-24 04:04 · Score: 2 · on SSH v. SRP

It's not complete, and it's not meant to be.

Maybe this will help make it more so: homepages for some of the software you discuss.

Anyone interested in the software mentioned above, or even just general UNIX security, would do good do take a gander at OpenBSD (http://www.openbsd.org). It's based on 4.4 BSD, like most of the Freenixes, and is designed with security foremost in mind. Think of it as FreeBSD after reading "1984". ;-)

It comes with OpenSSH. And Kerberos.

Ooh, and also... stickers! Put them on your box, and maybe the MiBs that break into your house while you're at work won't even bother trying to crack yer system.

Remember: paranoia is good. Anyone with doubts regarding the truth of that statement should check out the Echelon links that have been appearing here lately.

Ciao.

I am the Lord.

Re:I dream of working for Microsoft by DaisyEmmett · 2000-02-21 19:30 · Score: 3 · on James Fallows on His Brief Microsoft Tenure

Although I strongly suspect this is a troll, it is entirely correct. Microsoft products tend to range from the OK (Excel) to the truly suckworthy (Visual Basic). However, they manage to dominate in just about every single field they enter.

How?

Branding. For clueless C[IT]Os and other such top management material, choosing Microsoft is a safe bet. No one ever got fired for selecting a Microsoft product. No matter how much they deserved to.

Now, the book by Bill Gates *I'd* like to see is not the dire 'The Road Ahead', but 'Bill's Big Book of Marketing, or how to steal the world'. If there's one thing he knows about, it's how to dispose of the competition.

Re:Mining the sky by Paul+Fernhout · 2000-02-09 21:50 · Score: 1 · on Exploring the Asteroids

Excellent book!

John Lewis (the author) is one of the heros of the space settlement revolution. A more technical book by him is "Physics and Chemistry of the Solar System": http://www.astro.umd.edu/ ~mcfadden/books/Lewisreview.html

He is involved somehow with Spacewatch (a program at the University of Arizona, led by Dr. Tom Gehrels) which has done much of the pioneering work in the field of NEO detection. http://www.xs4all.nl/~carlkop/asterimp.h tml

Another good site is: http://www.permanent.com/ where Mark Prado also has a book on this topic.

Re:Whacking the mole by QuadPro · 2000-01-21 04:09 · Score: 1 · on Injunction Against 2600 for DeCSS

For now, just post mirrors under this thread.

http://www.stupendous.org/
http://www.xs4all.nl/~joskam/

Plus I joined the EFF, 2600 and bought the copyleft shirt.

IPSec by alannon · 2000-01-16 04:07 · Score: 1 · on Kerberos Outside the US?

I recommend that anybody interested in seamless IP encryption that supports any IP application without any changes look into IPSec. There's a free implementation called FreeS/WAN for linux. For PCs and Macs there are free client-side implementations availible in the form of PGP Freeware's PGPNet module.

IPSec can easily be set up to support an entire Internet subnet, where it encrypts all data between IPSec-enabled gateways, or encryption and authentication directly between two IPSec configured hosts.

As an added bonus, the Internet Engineering Task Force has included IPSec in the IPv6 specification, so there's a very high chance the protocol will become widely adopted in the near future.

FreeS/WAn can be found here and PGP Freeware here.

John Gilmore, DEEP CRACK by burris · 1999-12-22 00:53 · Score: 1 · on Pick Your Own Net Person Of The Year

I believe John Gilmore deserves some recognition for finally putting the nail in DES' coffin. His machine, DEEP CRACK, is absolutely amazing. The NSA said it couldn't be done (in response to Weiner's 1990 paper describing such a machine). Of course, the NSA probably already has several...

While those in the crypto community who were both knowledgable and honest were vocal about 56-bit keys being vulnerable, Gilmore put his money on the line to prove it unequivocably. See Deep Crack Page at EFF

The results: the Clinton Administration was forced to admit in public that their export controls were a farce and needed serious revision. Now even PGP is freely exportable. The public will benefit from stronger security software as more products appear from relaxed export controls and the lack of weak encryption such as single DES.

Furthermore, Gilmore funded the development of FreeSWAN which was released this year. FreeSWAN is a free, open source IP/SEC implementation for Linux that gives you real, secure VPN capabilities. Developed outside the US, it's free of any type of import/export restrictions.

Whether or not you feel Gilmore deserves as much recognition as the likes of Bidzos, I highly encourage you to download and install FreeSWAN and begin using it. Provide your coding expertise if you are outside of the US as there is plenty of work to be done.

Ubiquitous, strong, link-level encryption between all nodes on the 'Net WILL have a significant impact on the world. People like Gilmore are leading the way.

Run, don't walk, to FreeSWAN Home Page and get it. Install it on your firewall. Setup VPN's between you and all of your friend's networks. This is the real way to "Jam Eschelon" ...

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